


Monsters

by Enfilade



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen, Masks, Not Shippy, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8373007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enfilade/pseuds/Enfilade
Summary: It takes one to know one.  Can Tarn trust Deathsaurus with the truth under his mask?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between MTMTE #39 and MTMTE #50. SPOILERS for “The Dying of the Light” re: Tarn’s identity.
> 
> My contribution to #LostLightFest. I really wanted to write this scene as a non-shippy, safe for work, stand-alone story to reach out to a broader audience during #LostLightFest. Deathsaurus behaving in a manner that could potentially be read as flirtatious (or maybe he just likes to touch people, the way Tarn often does in the comics) is as far as this story goes.
> 
> For those who are following “On my Dark and Lonely Side,” I’m sure you’ll eventually see a ship-oriented, linked-to-the-fic’s-canon version at some point, since “taking off the mask” would be a major issue in a relationship.
> 
> Tarn’s home city, Deathsaurus’s real name and home city, Thunderwing’s role, Deathsaurus being a Super MTO and any past connection of his with Tarn are, at time of writing, my personal headcanon.

Deathsaurus’s talons slid under the lip of the mask and Tarn braced himself. For a moment he thought he could see the future. Deathsaurus would rip the mask from his face and Tarn, why, he would lift his right arm and give Deathsaurus two fusion cannon blasts in the chest. He’d have to kill his ally on principle, and that wouldn’t go well for the DJD, who’d need to get into the Peaceful Tyranny and away from the Warworld before Deathsaurus’s loyal troops figured out what Tarn had done. 

And yet, Tarn could not see any other outcome; if Deathsaurus tore away his mask, he would _have_ to execute him. He’d told Deathsaurus as much at the beginning of their alliance. Now the future was pre-ordained and all Tarn could do was feel regret at the immense amount of loss and waste in their coming destiny.

“Will you take it off for me?” Deathsaurus whispered.

Tarn blinked, coming back to himself, realizing that Deathsaurus was _not_ , in fact, taking the mask away from him.

“I…I can’t,” Tarn stammered.

Deathsaurus sighed and released him. Tarn should have felt relieved, but Deathsaurus looked disappointed, _hurt_ even, and that bothered Tarn for a reason he couldn’t explain.

“You don’t trust me,” Deathsaurus said.

Tarn’s spark twisted. “That’s not true.”

Deathsaurus’s wings lifted. “We’re allies and we’re heading off together to kill Megatron and _still_ you won’t let me see your face?” 

Tarn sighed. “I’m sorry. I said I wouldn’t lie to you. It’s…the mask doesn’t come off.”

Deathsaurus looked skeptical.

Tarn put his hands on his hips and decided to make a certain point very clear. “The mask has never been about my devotion. To Megatron, the Cause, or anything else.”

Deathsaurus stopped moving and watched Tarn intently.

Perhaps a little truth would mollify the Warworld commander. Tarn continued speaking. “It’s not about maintaining an aura of mystique to strike fear into the rank and file. It’s not about hiding my….ah…very well, it _might_ be that it’s useful to not have my every emotion broadcast on my face to whoever I’m dealing with.”

“You have no poker face,” Deathsaurus said dryly. “And so you turn the situation to your advantage by disguising it under a terrifying mask.” He smirked. “I’ve got to say, I’m impressed.” 

Was a half-truth the same as a lie? Deathsaurus was apparently satisfied by that answer. Tarn should not feel deceitful if he simply didn’t tell the whole truth. 

And yet he felt dishonest, and uncomfortable, and while he debated with himself, Deathsaurus stepped closer. Those hooked talons traced their way up Tarn’s throat, stopping under his chin. 

“But surely you don’t feel you have to hide your true thoughts from me?”

Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe he should…should just _trust_ Deathsaurus. 

Except he was hiding something far more shameful than some fleeting emotion.

“Or is it your identity that you’re hiding under there?” Deathsaurus asked.

Pain tore at Tarn’s spark. He jerked away, out of Deathsaurus’s reach. “I’ve never made a practice of hiding my identity. You can look it up in Soundwave’s records.”

Deathsaurus folded his arms and gave Tarn a wry look. 

Right. Deathsaurus wasn’t getting anything from official Decepticon records, not since he’d gone rogue.

“You could also look it up in Prowl’s, but I’ll save you the trouble.” For some reason Tarn felt compelled to prove Deathsaurus wrong, even though he rarely spoke about his original name, and was sure that of his own DJD, only Kaon knew it. “When I came online I was named Damus of Vos.”

Deathsaurus flinched. Tarn had expected the usual joke, the one that pointed out the irony of a Vosian taking the name of their rival city, but Deathsaurus looked as though he’d been slapped instead.

“If it’s not your identity, then _why_ all the urgency?” Deathsaurus’s optics flickered. “You realize it’s hard for me to trust you when every time I look at you I’m reminded that you’re keeping secrets.”

“Did you ever think maybe there was a good reason for that?” Tarn retorted. He looked at Deathsaurus—the gold horns on his chest, the glittering claws on the tips of his wings, the elaborate crest on his animal-shaped helm—and felt his fuel tank sink. How could he ever explain such a thing to someone like Deathsaurus?

But he could see suspicion in all four of Deathsaurus’s optics, and he knew very well how much transparency and honesty meant to the Warworld commander. Deathsaurus had been kept in the dark and used for others’ ends long enough to come by his distrust honestly. He had every reason to suspect that the secret behind Tarn’s mask might someday hurt him.

And he wasn’t wrong.

Tarn sighed. Quickly, then. Quickly, before he could think better of it. Before he could imagine Deathsaurus’s all-too-justifiable reaction. “Did it ever occur to you that there’s _nothing under the mask_?”

Deathsaurus cocked his head in an avian gesture of puzzlement. “What? I…what do you mean? I’ve seen you do shots—I know you’ve got a mouth under there.”

“The face under here,” Tarn said quietly, tapping one talon on the metal of his mask. “It’s not real.”

Deathsaurus tilted his head. “What’s _that_ mean? Not real?” His upper optics narrowed, fixated on what he could see of Tarn’s mouth through the slit in the mask.

“You know what empurata is.”

Deathsaurus nodded.

Tarn didn’t bother saying anything more. Deathsaurus was smart—he could figure it out. Tarn only had to wait a few moments before the lights went on in all four of Deathsaurus’s optics as he made the connection.

“You,” Deathsaurus said, moving his index talon in a “connect-the-dots” movement.

Tarn nodded. What more needed to be said?

Deathsaurus recoiled. “Who… _how_? Who would _dare_ and how did they get _close enough_?”

Which was something Tarn had needed to justify to himself late at night when recharge eluded him. “Were you the warrior you are now when _you_ first came online?”

Deathsaurus flinched. The barb had hurt him, and though Tarn wasn’t sure exactly what memories he’d hit on, he’d guessed correctly that even big, bad Deathsaurus was not immune from the MTO inferiority complex.

“Point taken,” Deathsaurus said tightly. “There’s a lot to be said for experience and skill.”

Tarn huffed. “Yes, that’s it exactly. I was born with an unwanted power that first manifested itself as the ability to damage inanimate machinery.”

Tarn watched as Deathsaurus parsed that information. “Before you broke _people_ , you just broke _things_ ,” the Warworld commander summarized. 

If Tarn was going to be honest with his ally, he might as well tell the whole truth. “Everyone called me Glitch.” Tarn could not keep the contempt from his voice as he spat out the repulsive nickname.

Deathsaurus’s optics narrowed in understanding. “Your abilities are terrifying now. But back then? It was an annoyance, wasn’t it?”

“I broke everything I touched.” Tarn glared balefully at Deathsaurus. “I had just started my career. I was going to be a musician. I was good. I had _dreams_ , I had _talent_ , I had opportunities. I lost _all of it_ because I left machinery in burned-out piles behind me. Ruined my own instruments. Alienated my colleagues. The Functionists warned me to stop it and I had no idea _how_.”

“They punished you,” Deathsaurus murmured.

Tarn nodded helplessly. “Empurata. It wasn’t just a demonstration of the power of the Law—it wasn’t just the violation of having my frame altered against my will. I lost my job, my status in society. Do you know what it was like in pre-war Vos?” Maybe Deathsaurus didn’t. He was too young to remember and not the sort of mech the Vosians would have welcomed anyway. “Vosian society said mechs like me belonged behind the scenes, hidden away like the embarrassments we were. I was taken in by Senator Shockwave. He was starting a sort of underground school for mechs like me…a place that would teach me how to control and use my outlier powers. For all the good it did me. I’d _already_ lost my face and my job.”

“It came too late,” Deathsaurus guessed. “Too late for everything that mattered to you.”

Slowly, Tarn nodded his assent. “Shockwave’s school taught me how to hone my powers. With practice, I could damage machinery without even touching it. With _more_ practice, I learned _not_ to hurt people by touching them. Though by then…” Tarn folded his arms tight against his chest, an old instinctive gesture dating back before the empurata. “By then I’d already learned not to get too close to people. And anyone I’d want to get close to learned that it hurt to get too close to me.”

“That power isolated you.”

“Yes. Outlier or no, I didn’t really belong in Shockwave’s school. There was Trailbreaker, with his forcefield, and Windcharger, with his magnetism, and Skids…” Tarn almost choked. _Magnetism_ was also a word he’d use for Skids. But Deathsaurus was watching him and so he stammered, “Skids was a superlearner.”

Deathsaurus seemed not to notice how Tarn had stumbled when talking about Skids.

Relieved, Tarn continued, “All of _them_ had very _nice_ , heroic powers. Even Roller, who wasn’t a proper Outlier, was remarkably strong. They were flashy and admirable and they looked good in action. Me?” He looked down at his hands. “It hurts,” he admitted.

“What hurts?”

“My power. Using it. It’s physically painful. It hurts me.”

Deathsaurus’s optics widened. A rush of air whistled as he inhaled past his teeth.

“Practicing was agony,” Tarn continued. “Learning to control it was a million-year struggle. Failure meant harming my own comrades with a careless touch or an attempt at a comforting hug. Success meant reminding everyone that I was a disgusting little gremlin, an incarnation of rot and decay whose true nature, when unleashed, was a weapon against his enemies.” He folded his arms and said tightly, “So before you criticize me for _masochism,_ please remember that even Senator Shockwave and Orion Pax urged me to hurt myself for their glorious Cause, and at least Megatron gave me something in return. He gave me _respect_. Not just respect from the others, who feared me. Respect for _myself_.”

Deathsaurus’s optics glittered. “And that’s the secret, isn’t it. That you were ever anything _other_ than the spectre of judgment hanging over all our collective heads.”

“I can’t believe I’m telling you this,” Tarn said, in a tone of voice he usually reserved for scolding his team.

“Why’s that?” Deathsaurus asked mildly. Tarn glared at him. His wings hung loosely from his shoulders, and he leaned forward on his elbow, as though interested. His body language said _open, non-threatening_. It was quite an accomplishment for a mechanism with four savage optics and ten taloned fingers and more teeth than Tarn could count. Tarn reminded himself that no amount of _look, I’m harmless_ posturing would make Deathsaurus any less of a monster.

Tarn felt a jolt in the vicinity of his spark. Yes, of course that was why he was saying so much. “Ordinarily it’s not very flattering to admit that people recoiled from me on account of my being a monster.” He paused. “But you know exactly what that’s like, don’t you?”


End file.
